Tagged: Fiction writing
First Person, Second Person, Third Person – Which Perspective to Use?
One thing that a lot of writers have trouble with is perspective and tense. In itself, people can switch tense mid-sentence and some have trouble staying consistent, but a bigger and more challenging question is what perspective/tense should you use? There’s no definitive guide as to which works best for each story type – any can work if done well – but there are some basics that are worth considering:
First Person – Present Tense: ‘I wake up in a strange room, looking up at the ceiling’. This is the logging things as they happen. I’ve found this best used in action novels and faster paced books, as it’s more immediate, things are coming at you quickly. It lends itself to sharper, quicker prose, as it’s the language is progressive.
First Person – Past Tense: ‘I woke up in a strange room, looked up at the ceiling’. This is also effective in faster paced novels, but the ‘looking back’ style lends itself to more introspection by the narrator – if you’re writing a book where the main character is doing a lot of internal monologue, thinking over how he/she feels or sees things, I think this is a more effective voice to go with than First Person – Present Tense.
Second Person – Present Tense: ‘You wake up in a strange room, looking up at the ceiling’. This is also another good one for faster passed pieces, though rarely is it used for an entire novel length. The best uses I’ve seen have come in the form of chapters within a larger work, break-out switch-ups that work to amplify a segment, give the reader a sense of being drawn in.
Second Person – Past Tense: ‘You woke up in a strange room, looked up at the ceiling’. I actually don’t find much difference in effectiveness between Second Person – Past and Second Person – Present, the reader effect is similar. I would think the use of this would depend on the style of the rest of the book – unless you were using Second Person exclusively, which most authors are not.
Third Person – Present Tense: ‘He wakes up in a strange room, looking up at the ceiling’. Third person is a great way to explore more of the world your characters are in. Third Person – Present – as with all ‘present’ tenses – is good for faster moving narratives, as it keeps things immediate. Third person allows you to explore more perspectives within the story, whilst also only revealing the motivations of characters when you need, as opposed to First Person, which generally forces you to reveal the inner thoughts of your narrator all through.
Third Person – Past Tense: ‘He woke up in a strange room, looked up at the ceiling’. Similar in effect to present tense. I find most fantasy novels are written in Third Person – Past, as it allows for the writer to reveal more about the world he/she has created through historical or atmospheric exposition, which is required when you need to reveal the rules of a new world. Third Person enables you to reveal what you want when you want the reader to know it, as opposed to First Person, which is more confined to what the narrator knows.
These are obviously very quick overviews, and are in no way encompassing of the intricacies of each style, but hopefully they give you an idea of the purpose and strengths of each. Choosing the style of your piece is a big factor in determining how it will resonate with readers – each story has it’s own unique voice, and it’s important to understand the emotional arc of your tale – what you want to reveal and when – to help you determine which voice is best. Some authors will go their entire careers only writing in one style, but the best can switch between them, utilising the strengths of each to create the most compelling literature – even including sections of different styles in one work.
It’s about looking at your story plan, as a whole, and understanding what you want your reader to feel as they move through. You’ll generally be influenced by writers you admire, but always worth considering how to best use perspective and tense before you write, thinking about what’s the best fit. If your story is fast paced, then present tense is probably better. If your piece takes into account the perspectives of various characters, third person might work best. There are no definitive rules, but playing over the sentences in your mind in the different styles will eventually reveal which one is the most natural fit for your story’s voice.
Handwriting
One thing I’ve found to be almost universally true of writers is that we all have terrible handwriting. My theory is that because our heads get rushed with creative ideas, our minds flashing by creating whole worlds from the seed of a single thought, our hands struggle to keep up the pace. As a result, we form a sort of scribble that we can get down fast enough to capture our ideas which is also legible enough to enable us to translate what we’ve put down. I honestly have no concerns about people reading my notes, no self-consciousness about what they might find, because there’s almost no chance they’ll be able to read them. It’s like a cross between cursive and hieroglyphics, the only things missing are a few illustrations of the Eye of Ra and a cat or two (if I were to add these pictures in, it would, if anything, make more sense). It’s even worse when I wake up in the middle of the night with an idea that I just have to get down – I don’t want to wake the kids, so I scribble notes in the dark. In the morning I see these sloping sentences, wilting down the page. It’s generally enough for me to remember what I was on about, but that’s about all it’s good for.
But despite this, despite the fact that my handwriting resembles that of a cliche movie psychopath, I write almost everything by hand as a first draft. My approach is that I write first on inspiration – I play an idea over and over in my head till I start to imagine it in full sentences and it’s almost too much for me to not write it out. Then I get a pen and start putting it down – I find the connection between thought and handwriting more natural than typing it out straight away. This is mostly for fiction work and longer form non-fiction, for many shorter pieces (like this one) I can put down a few notes when they come to me then just type it when I get the chance. But for more involved stuff, it will almost all be done by hand first. I would say 85% of my first novel is scrawled across three or four Spirax notebooks that are now somewhere in my study. Every element of the book started in handwritten form.
The next phase of writing is the logical, where I make sense of the writing, clarify the paragraphs and structures, etc. I find that having a hand written version to start with is conducive to this practice, as you have to re-write every single letter. You can’t pick and choose, you have to go over each part as least once, giving you a more analytical overview of the work. As I go, I’ll add in bits where they fit, I’ll read sentences out loud if they don’t feel right. I’ll re-construct parts entirely if I ever feel myself drifting from the story – that’s the best indicator that what you’ve done isn’t working. The story should hold your attention, even if you’re the one who wrote it. While you’re very familiar with the content, if you feel yourself drifting at all, thinking about the shopping, a TV show, anything other than the piece as you read, it’s worth going back and re-working the section you faded from to ensure it keeps the reader hooked. If you’re drifting, most likely your readers are gonna’ drift too. And again, having a handwritten start point helps highlight things like this because you have to read it all in order to enter it in. It effectively forces you into doing a full second draft before you can do anything else.
I then try to leave my work for as long as possible to get objective distance from it, clear my head of it so I can re-read it more as a reader than a writer. Even when I read novels I always think of ways I would change sentence structures and paragraphs, so editing comes pretty natural for me, particularly with the perspective of leave from the work. And by that stage it’s moved into a full-typed form – I might write hand-written notes down as I think of them, but my reliance on the pen is gone by that third draft stage – and definitely, no one would have read anything I’ve written till after that third draft stage. Even if I think I’ve put down something great, I always resist sending anything out till I’ve had that distance from it – I ALWAYS find things I want to change once I have some perspective.
Over the years I’ve seen experts lament the erosion of handwriting. There’s an idea that handwriting will one day cease to exist, that kids these days barely have any use for it now – just as younger generations are baffled by old school telephones, one day they’ll be scratching their heads as they look at pens end pencils. To some degree I think it’s a valid concern, but more likely, reliance on hand writing will reduce, not cease. I still love the flow of writing from my head and through the pen, I still enjoy the feel of paper, of seeing words indented into the page. Obviously I don’t know, but I don’t get the feeling that hand writing is totally falling away. I sincerely hope it isn’t, as, for me, it’s crucial to the writing process. I can only imagine it will be of benefit to many other writers in future, and if they’re not learning it, maybe they’ll never discover it, and we’ll miss out on great works as a result.
Breaking Down Novel Writing into Achievable Daily Targets
A long time ago, I remember reading an interview with a young author in the paper. She’d just had her first novel published, and she talked about how she’d done an ‘apprenticeship’ in novel writing by writing short stories – writing as many as she could, entering them into competitions, etc. This note stuck with me – at the time I was into short story writing exclusively. I was reading a lot of Amy Hempel, Alice Munro and Lorrie Moore and I was all about being a short story writer. Who needs to write a novel? Short story’s where it’s at. This, at least in part, was because the thought of writing 50,000+ words was way too daunting to contemplate. That word count is a massive mountain to climb. I had attempted a novel, kind of, but it was half way through 30 pages in so not quite long enough.
But this idea of doing an apprenticeship in short story opened my mind to the idea of planning a novel in short story form. I didn’t know that I’d be able to write a novel but I could give you 100 short stories, no problem. I was writing new pieces everyday, coming up with new ideas, it became more conceivable for me to visualise a novel as 50 connected short stories. 50,000 words = scary. 50 short stories = doable.
This is how I planned and wrote my first novel (and planned my second, the writing has been slightly more problematic). I thought of an idea, of a concept that I thought would work. I thought of the key points, played them over and over in my mind and then, once I had a basic skeleton of the story, I sat down and wrote a list of 50 short pieces that would tell the story. Suddenly I could see how it was possible, writing short stories, one by one, was easy, I could knock them over at a rate of one a night. If I could get a solid plan down, I could do it. And with luck, lonely nights, and a lot of persistence, I did.
Of course, there was a lot more that came up along the way – extra planning, re-plotting, adding in chapters to build additional context once the themes were clear (note: the themes of your novel will only be 100% clear once you’ve completed your first draft), getting the voice right – there was more work to be done than one planning session. But it did work, and I do think this is a solid way to go about writing a novel. If you’re dedicated to writing a book but having trouble visualising such a vast amount of content, I’d recommend this as a process to help rationalise the workload, to break it down to an digestable amount. Writing 1000 words a day is something you should commit to, if you can, and if you’re able to do that, you can write a chapter a day. And eventually it will start to take form.
How Important is a Great Opening to a Novel?
I love opening a new novel. I love going through the bookshop – the smell of books – and I love finding that one that is going to take me away, curl round my brain like a cat and warm me into this whole other world. And one of the great things about new books, one of the reasons that I’ll take it to the counter, is the opening line or paragraph. I love a good cover, but more importantly, I love good writing, and that first section, for me, really sets the tone. A good opening will drop you right into the story and make it hard for you to leave. It will capture your imagination and almost force you to read on. It’s also a great learning tool for writers, working out how the great books begin, understanding how that can be applied to your story. There’s so much to learn from those first lines, it’s worth reading as many as you can to ensure you are using the best starting point for your story.
As an example, here are some of my favourite novel openings:
‘Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler’s pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. For a long time though, Tyler and I were best friends. People are always asking, did I know about Tyler Durden.
The barrel of the gun pressed against the back of my throat, Tyler says “We really won’t die.”
With my tongue I can feel the silencer holes we drilled into the barrel of the gun. Most of the noise a gunshot makes is expanding gases, and there’s the tiny sonic boom a bullet makes because it travels so fast. To make a silencer, you just drill holes in the barrel of the gun, a lot of holes. This lets the gas escape and slows the bullet to below the speed of sound.
You drill the holes wrong and the gun will blow off your hand.’
– Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
It’s so fast-paced and it perfectly sets the tone for the rest of the novel, which all moves at breakneck speed. Palahniuk drops you right into the chaos and lets you work it out from there – a really good opening.
‘Until the telephone rang, the only sound in my office was the scratching of my pen as I made margins notes, corrections and amendments.
I pressed the speaker button.
‘Carl speaking’
‘Carl’
‘Catherine! I meant to send you home hours ago…’
She interrupted me: ‘I am home. I’ve been home, been out to see a film, eaten a pizza, paid the baby-sitter and watched the end of Newsnight.
The clock on my desk read 11:42. I turned in my chair. The window of my office was floor to ceiling. Through the window, I could see the city glitter and the night sky. No stars – a low cloud layer made the sky glow almost red.
Catherine continued: ‘I’m calling because the last train leaves in twenty-five minutes’.
The Coma by Alex Garland
This also sets the scene for the whole novel, the pace, the steady flow of the narrative. But again, Garland drops you right into the story, not pages of him living his normal life, but right here, right in the midst of where the action is about to take place. It’s an important note – you want to start your story at a compelling point, a point where people need to turn the page and find out what happens next. Granted, this scene is still somewhat commonplace, but we know the narrator is now out in the middle of the night and will struggle to make the train home – and we, as the audience, know what a frightening train journey that midnight trip can be.
‘About the accident itself I can say very little. Almost nothing. It involved something falling from the sky. Technology. Parts, bits. That’s it, really: all I can divulge. Not much, I know.
It’s not that I’m being shy. It’s just that – well, for one, I don’t even remember the event. It’s a blank: a white slate, a black hole. I have vague images, half-impressions: of being, or having been – or, more precisely, being about to be – hit; blue light; railings; lights of other colours; being held above some kind of tray or bed. But who’s to say that these are genuine memories? Who’s to say my traumatized mind didn’t just make them up, or pull them out from somewhere else, some other slot, and stick them there to plug the gap – the crater – that the accident had blown? Minds are versatile and wily things. Real chancers.’
Remainder by Tom McCarthy
Remainder is a real mind twister of a novel, looking at psychology and the depths of the human condition. This opening sets the scene really well – you get, from this, that the narrator was involved in accident in which something fell from the sky and damaged his brain. The novel is about how he doesn’t know what’s real anymore, what are memories and what’s imagined, and this opening clearly aligns to that theme. I like this because McCarthy has explained a lot very quickly, very cleverly, almost without you knowing it. But again, it drops you into the story, rather than starting with long-winded context or backstory.
‘He’d cut His throat with the knife. He’d near chopped off His hand with the meat cleaver. He couldn’t object, so I lit a Silk Cut. A sort of wave of something was going across me. There was fright, but I’d daydreamed how I’d be.
He was bare and dead face-down on the scullery lino with blood round. The Christmas tree lights were on then off. You could change the speed those ones flashed at. Over and over you saw Him stretched out then the pitch dark with his computer screen still on.’
Morvern Callar by Alan Warner
The detached, confused emotion of the narrator streams all the way through Morvern Callar, and again, the author has dropped us right into the story, leaving Morvern at home with her deceased boyfriend – what will she do next? I also love the detail in this scene, the image of the Christmas lights flicking on and off gives it a real sense, an authenticity and feeling, through such a small but important detail.
Not every novel starts out by dropping you into the action like this, but the vast majority do. It’s a powerful tool, and an important lesson for writers to learn, that the story starts where the action does. Your readers will work out the details and you can communicate back story through their interactions within the narrative – in that sense, it’s like someone telling you a story in real life. People generally tell you the highlight, the most shocking element up front, then explain the detail of how it got to that point. That peak moment is the hook that will gets the audience in, and it’s important to use that to compel your readers to turn the page.
One other thing I’ve heard when discussing good opening lines is ‘yeah, but those are great novels’ – as if their own work could not, and should not, be compared to works of this calibre. But why shouldn’t it? Why wouldn’t you hold your own work up for comparison against the greats? If you want your book to stand side by side with them in a book store, you have to aspire to being compared with them on quality, on compulsion. It’s important you do compare your work to established authors, you should be as good as them. Every author of every book was once a nobody. They started with nothing behind them. A blank page. The only difference now is that they made it. So your work should be compared to them. Because that’s the way that you can make it too.
Write What You Know
In one of the writer’s groups I’m part of, they were recently having a debate about the old writing adage ‘write what you know’. There was a surprising amount of differing opinions on this, people taking it literally, people suggesting a more abstract meaning. I’ve never really been that tied up about writing what I know in a specific literal sense, but I also don’t think that’s the intended meaning of that statement. Write what you know does not mean, literally, write what you know.
If the intention was to take this in its literal sense, how many great science fiction and fantasy stories would never have taken form? Some things, you can’t know, but again, that’s not the intended meaning of that sentiment. The intention is to highlight the importance of honesty in your work, of writing from the heart – and not necessarily your heart, but the heart of the characters in the story you’ve created. When writing, you are beholden to the honesty of the story you’re presenting. If a character does something, you have to know why he or she did it. It can’t be that you need a plot device, you can’t have things happening at random, that’s simply not real. That is the essence of ‘write what you know’, that you write with honesty and remain true to the characters as you know them. As they would be in the reality of the world you’ve created.
For instance, you need to know all the traits and history of your characters. You need to know that your main character was raised mostly by his mother, that his father never knew how to deal with him, that he took longer than normal to speak clearly because he didn’t feel confident around the other kids. That his first love never even looked at him, that he was intimidated by male teachers because of his absent father, that he was easily lured into trouble by peer pressure. That he didn’t want to go into the abandoned house, but the kids made him do it, then rode off on him, and left him scared and distressed when the police came.
This sort of summary, a basic rundown of the general moments in a character’s life, these details might never come up in your story, but they are the elements that will lead you to knowing and understanding how he will react in all situations. Now you know, no matter where you take the story, that the character is intimidated by older men. Maybe that’s a key plot element, maybe not. The point is, this is something you know, you’ve come to know this through your character development.
Normally I work in the opposite direction – I think of the major plot points then work backwards through the character’s history to understand what would have made him take the actions he/she did in order drive the story – but by doing that, as the story develops, the characters start to take on a life of their own, as you know all the things that have happened to them. You know how they’d react if this or that happened. Because you know them. They’re real, not plot devices. Ideally, you’d have this depth of knowledge with every significant character in your story.
The important thing to note about ‘write what you know’ is it’s not about what you know. It’s about what you need to know. You need to research, plot and learn your characters so you can know the information you need to communicate your story in an authentic and believable way. You need to be honest to the story, honest to each scene and each interaction – because people can sense fake a mile off. If your characters are inconsistent, that will jar in the reader’s mind. You need to be real, to see the scene in its reality, then present it in its truest form.
You can’t know what the scene would be like in the wake of a nuclear bomb blast. But you can research and know the detail of nuclear winter. You know what winter is like, you know what smoke and haze can be like. Based on what you’ve read and learned – on what you know – you can imagine the reality. Now feel it. Now write it down. That’s the essence of ‘write what you know’.
It should probably be slightly extended:
‘Write what you know, learn what you don’t’
And there’s never any limit on what you can learn.
My Issues with Breaking Bad
I recently noted in a group discussion that I felt Breaking Bad had received more praise than it might have deserved due to their being no competing show in it’s league at the time it was broadcast. It was like I’d just cursed their unborn children, the crowd turned on me in an instant, demanding an explanation of my reckless remarks, a justification of the opinion (and I should underline that important point) which I’d put forth. People love Breaking Bad. A lot. You gotta’ be careful what you say about it.
For the sake of clarity, here is a record of my issues with Breaking Bad – while it is an excellent TV show, it did have some flaws that have been glossed over by the hype around it’s final season.
1. In almost every season there was a lull. Now, you can say, ‘yeah, but that happens with every show, nothing hits the mark with every episode, and I agree, but I felt Breaking Bad’s lull’s were major. I gave up on it twice, only to come back when I’d heard chatter about the latter episodes or when I couldn’t find anything better to watch and gave it a second chance. About three episodes into Season 3 – when Skyler was busting Walter’s balls about his other life, the show was just treading water. It felt like nothing was happening, the Skyler storylines never really did much for me and it didn’t seem to have any plan on where it was headed next. Same with Season 4 – early on, where Walter was becoming more paranoid and concerned about Jessie being ‘re-assigned’ by Gus, there was a stagnant block of episodes where nothing really advanced. Both times, it felt like the show had lost it’s way and I gave up on it, only to come back in – just in time on both counts, as it got back to it’s peaks in every season, and the final episodes of each series were very strong. But for me, those lulls were significant – in terms of being one of the greatest shows ever, I feel they are enough to count against it.
2. All of the characters became unlikeable. Similar to the lulls, they did come back around, but I remember there being a period where you didn’t want any of them to come out on top, none of them deserved to succeed. That can be a powerful storytelling advice in itself, but I didn’t feel this was an intended character arc, it was more a result of the writers making too much up on the fly. That lack of planning sometimes lead to issues in story flow, as it detracted from the magnetism of the show. Walt, in particular, would sometimes do things so devoid of his former self that it didn’t seem genuine – granted, the storyline trajectory aimed to show how a normal man could become a feared criminal, I get that, but sometimes his character moved a little too far from himself, more than I could go with.
3. Many critical story elements were reliant on coincidence. This is the criticism I’ve seen most often on the web, that a lot of things had to fall into place at just the right time to make things happen. Even in the great finale, the circumstances leading to Walt first not getting killed by the bikers in the desert along with Hank then wiping them out with an automated machine gun that poppped out of the boot of his car, these things needed a lot to fall into place at the right time. It often felt like the writers had got themselves into a corner and they needed something, anything, to get them out, so it didn’t feel as planned, as clever, as it could have been.
Admittedly, all of these elements are, on balance with the greater moments of the show, pretty minor. Some of the characters and scenes in Breaking Bad were so good that I’d be up at 4am at the end of the episode, thinking ‘just one more’ before pressing play again. At it’s best, it’s one of the most compelling shows I’ve ever seen, and I do think it deserves to be considered among the best ten, fifteen shows in history. But I don’t think it’s the best. And I do think the lack of any ‘great’ shows airing at the same time as the finale season has amplified sentiment for Breaking Bad to crazy heights.
‘So what’s better then, idiot?’ (While not everyone says ‘idiot’ with this, that’s generally the tone in which the question is asked) The Wire, for me, is still a far superior show. Game of Thrones, thus far, has been consistently solid. Seinfeld, at it’s best, would rank higher. The Simpsons has played such a significant part in pop-culture that it’s undeniably one of the greatest shows of all-time – no doubt people will argue that The Simpsons has also had weak seasons, which is true, but that show changed the way we communicate, it changed how we see things. The cultural impact of The Simpsons is far more significant than Breaking Bad. Looking at a more isolated example, the first season of Lost was amazing, way better than anything Breaking Bad was able to achieve – of course, Lost ‘lost’ it’s way it the proceeding seasons, but when I think of how good that first season was, that was probably as close to the peak of TV writing that I’ve seen. On balance, Breaking Bad was a better show, but by comparison, Lost had a higher high point, in my view.
No doubt all the Breaking Bad die-hards will dismiss this, noting that for every example I’ve put forward, I’ve highlighted the same issues I’ve pointed to with Breaking Bad – that it had bad moments in amongst the brilliance. But the three points above, cumulatively, form a sore point in my mind when I think back on the show. Yes, it was great, and I’m definitely sad to not have anymore Walter White, but was it the greatest show ever. Nah, I don’t think so.
Reflections on a Societal Default to the Negative
Why you? What makes you’re any different? Who do you think you are? Why would they listen to you? How are you gonna’ do that? What do you know about it? You’ll never do it. You’ll never make it. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. Over your head. Out of your mind. Out of your depth. Do you know how many people are trying to do that? No hope. Not a hope in hell. Hopeless. Hope you’ve got a back-up plan. Hope’s only gonna’ take you so far. You can’t live on hope, you know? Fat chance. Snowball’s chance. Zero chance. Not a chance of that happening. Chances are slim. What are the chances? Honestly though, you don’t have a chance. You can’t. You won’t. Why bother? Why even consider it? Impossible. Unlikely. Doubtful. You’re better off to just forgetting about it. Are you crazy? Don’t get ahead of yourself. Don’t think you’re better than you are. Just leave it. Move on. Give up. Give it away. Let it go. Take a look around you. Take a good, hard look at yourself. Look at your situation. Look at the reality. Reality is. Not in this reality. Face the facts. Face the truth. Honestly. Seriously. Be serious. Be real. Be realistic. Wake up. Wake up to yourself. Open your eyes. Stop dreaming. Really. Why you?
It’s a wonder anyone ever tries anything out of the ordinary.
Time to change your way of thinking.
On Dealing with Criticism (and the Pain that Comes with it)
Here’s something that’s true in everything in life – criticism is hard to take. No one wants to hear what they’re doing wrong. Even helpful criticism, like ‘you’re breath stinks’ is generally deflating. In writing, criticism is a required element, a constant that will hurt every time you hear it. But it’s necessary. It gets easier over time as you learn to take in what you need and discard what you don’t, but if being told where you’ve gone wrong is something that cuts you deep, you’re gonna’ find it tough to succeed in the writing world.
I know the pain. When my novel came out I was, of course, incredibly excited. I bought the newspapers every weekend hoping to find a review of my book – and all the feedback I’d had on it to that stage was positive, so I was hoping for more of the same. The first review I read was in The Age – The Age being the most respected newspaper for literary content in my home state. The reviewer, Thuy On, had this to say:
‘Rohypnol tries a bit too hard to impress by following the “boys behaving badly and lashing out at society’s moralistic strictures” template, but we’ve read it all before and it doesn’t offer anything else to this particular sub-genre.’
It hurt – oh, it hurt. My life’s biggest achievement, something I’d been wholly committed to for years, torn down in one sentence. I felt shamed, depressed. People I grew up with would be reading this, all my bragging rights as a published author shrunk down to a passing remark. Maybe I wasn’t good enough, maybe the publisher had got it wrong and I wasn’t talented. I know the pain all too well – and this was in a major newspaper.
And there were others.
From The Australian:
‘When a novel begins with the line “Troy f—ed up”, you can probably guess its ambition will be to shock and that this is unlikely to be carried out successfully. A ready use of expletives, like shape poems and the liberal application of exclamation marks, are devices that quickly lose their effect and purpose.’
Yep. The Australian is a national publication. This is what people were going to read about my pride and joy, Australia-wide.
A commentator on GoodReads had this helpful critique:
‘Wanting to be an author myself I figured I should start supporting Australian fiction, so I bought this as it looked interesting and as though it may have something to say. Even though I wasn’t going into it expecting Heart Of Darkness I still came away majorly disappointed. No wonder Aussie fiction doesn’t get much recognition; the characters are 2-D, unbelieveably stereotypical and bland and the story makes no sense. The characters are like try-hard anarchists, date raping women and turning their backs on their parents and society at large. Having the main character follow these flimsy ideals makes the whole premise seem ridiculous. Plot holes also abound, not the least of which the fact a well known group of date rapists live within the community and are never confronted nor questioned by peers. Picked this up wanting to like it, but for drug induced humour and working class violence and profanity I’ll stick with Irvine Welsh.’
Weak characters? Plot holes? Excuse me? This isn’t something I just chucked together on a weekend, this is the result of hundreds of hours of work, and you’re just taking me down like that? And worse, I’m the reason you’ve lost faith in Australian fiction as a whole? That’s quite the weight to bear.
Compare these to the worst critiques you’ve ever had. I’m guessing they’re worse or, at the least, on par.
Every single criticism hurts, but you have to take it in. You have to absorb the info, process it, then cross-check those comments against what you’re trying to achieve. Were they valid criticisms? Were they accurate to your intentions? Are you confident that your work is as good as it could be? This last one is the key – you have to know you’ve done the work, that you’ve done all you can, and that the finished product is what you want it to be. If you can have faith in that and be true to yourself, you’ll be more resilient to the critical swipes and stings. You have to be strong, trust your instincts, and stick to what you do. Because there is one other aspect of criticism that’s important to keep in perspective, a crucial balancing point to counter the pain of negativity.
Criticism comes trailing behind success. The more successful you are, the more people read your work, and the more people read your work, the higher the chance some people are going to dislike it. Nothing in the world that is universally liked. There are millions, maybe even billions, of people who love Justin Bieber, but I don’t know any of them. And as you or I sit back and scoff at Bieber’s latest antics, there are way more people looking at that same story with wide-eyed adoration. We are not the target audience, but as his popularity expands, we’re exposed to his work. And we don’t like it. We’re haters only because he’s big enough to be within our realm of awareness. The more widely known you are, the more people are going to see your work, which, inevitably, means more people are going to hate it. That’s how it is. So in some ways, criticism can be seen as a measure of how well you’re doing – in order for people to criticise you, they have to be aware of you. And one person’s opinion is never going to define your success. Don’t let it sink you – your stuff isn’t their thing, no problem, there are billions of others who might check it out. A single opinion is not indicative of what you do.
To support that point, and to close out the post on a positive, below are a couple of the notes of praise that the book also received. On balance, I got way more positive comments than negative (the book generally averages 4-star reviews on most book review sites), but like anything, the bad ones stand out. You can’t let negativity get into your heart – read it, go for a walk, think it through, then keep the notes you need and discard the ones you don’t. You need to keep learning, keep improving and keep pursuing what you’re passionate about. And one piece of advice that was given to me very early on: Don’t ever respond to critical reviews of your work. No good ever comes of that.
‘Andrew Hutchinson’s debut novel Rohypnol is a great read. It’s assured, convincingly portrayed and grippingly plotted’ – Andy Murdoch, MX Magazine
‘Hutchinson weaves this plot with fierce authority and it is this that makes it such a standout debut. From the first paragraph you are confident this storyteller knows exactly where he is going to take you and, with such an assured, strong voice, he has the power to take you anywhere. This is no small feat.’ Louise Swinn, Sydney Morning Herald
‘A blistering, almost terrifying novel about social alienation, wrought in stark and pitiless prose, it paints a disturbing portrait of a nameless protagonist whose violence is without social cause or particular reason.’ – Kathleen Mitchell Award 2008 shortlist comments
Pitching Your Novel is the Worst
One thing all writers hate is the pitch. You have to do it – you mention that you’ve written a book and people are going to ask what it’s about. But it’s not an easy thing to answer. This is something you’ve spent months, even years with, characters you know inside and out, created lives you’ve lived. How do you summarize all those story intricacies into one sentence?
When I’d finished my first novel, I submitted it for consideration for an Emerging Writers Festival event called ‘Literary Speed Dating’. The concept was that five unpublished writers would sit across the table from five publishing industry types and get a chance to pitch their novel. This was in a crowded room, on the opening night of the festival. Oh, and also, my novel is about a group of young guys who drug and rape girls (it’s totally not about that, but that’s the standout plot point and… see, the pitch – painful). This wasn’t going to go well.
I remember the night, Christos Tsiolkas did the opening speech. Christos, it goes without saying, was amazing – he ‘s one of the best I’ve seen at capturing emotion in his talks, and his timing is always perfect, elevating the passion as he moves through his words. The crowd were cheering wildly and he came down and walked through, like a rock star, and he saw me and gave me a hug – and I felt like the belle of the ball – ‘he chose me’. Then everyone was looking at me like I was somebody they should be paying attention to, then they went back to what they were doing and I went back to staring at those five empty seats at the front of the stage, one of which I was about to be taking up to pitch my controversial novel at five unsuspecting professionals.
It was nerve wracking.
I kinda’ switched to auto-pilot – you know how sometimes you can be talking but not actually listening to anything you’re saying? It was like that, I was sitting across from these sceptical looking important folk, yelling to be heard over the noise of the room, with random passers-by leaning down to eavesdrop on the conversation, pitching my difficult-to-pitch master work. Honestly, how do you pitch a novel like that? Rohypnol is about a group of guys who drug and rape girls, but it’s a social commentary, it questions modern privilege and the factors that lead people to do horrible things. It’s not, I wouldn’t say, about drugs and/or rape. But how do you pitch it any other way? It was tough.
But something happened.
I was speaking to Michael Williams who, at that time, was a publisher at Text Publishing. Michael listened to what I was saying, my voice raspy from yelling, my mind worn out from trying to think of clever angles to describe the book. Michael leaned forward, his hand over his mouth, and he listened.
‘Do you have any sample chapters?’ He asked.
My God. He was asking to see my work. A real life publisher wanted to see what I’d written. I did have sample chapters that I’d printed off at the local Officeworks, but I also had a complete version with me. I asked Michael if he’d prefer the whole thing or the sample.
‘Give me the whole thing.’ Michael said.
My God. I just handed my book to a publisher. This was happening. I gave it over, I watched him put it in his bag, then our time was up. I think I pitched to two more people, but Michael was the big fish that night, he worked for the most reputable publisher. And he’d taken my book. I was excited. I kept my phone on me at all times.
I never got a call.
Much later, after the book had been published, I spoke to Michael at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. As much as I was intimidated by him at the speed dating event, he’s actually a really easygoing, friendly guy. I told him how we met at the event, how he might not remember me but…
‘No, I remember you.’ He said. He told me how they wanted to publish the book (they did actually offer me a contract just after I signed with Random House) and that he was disappointed he didn’t get to take it on. I was so glad to know that, such a great compliment – and, also, good to know I didn’t come across as a total idiot at that speed dating event.
This is the story that comes to mind whenever I think about the pitch – but there were plenty more times where I had to try and give a short description of the book and I just couldn’t. Admittedly, my book is probably one of the more difficult titles to pitch, but all writers hate it. The pitch is the worst. My best advice – think of the three key themes of the book, then try to distil those key elements down into one inclusive sentence. So, for Rohypnol it would be:
‘It’s about the influencing factors that can lead a person to becoming the worst kind of criminal’
That might not be quite right, but it gets the message across clearer than: ‘It’s about a group of guys who drug and rape girls’. It’s hard to get it to a one-liner that doesn’t sound too high-brow whilst captures the essence of your work. And ideally, you want it to be a conversation starter, you want people to want to know more. I think this sentence does that.
But ultimately I guess that’s the message of this post – it’s not about how you can do it better, not about the best process to use. The message of this post is more simply empathetic – yeah, I know, you hate trying to do your pitch. Everyone does.
You, my friend, are not alone.
What Writers Can Learn from Game of Thrones
As many would be aware, the teaser trailers for Season 4 of Game of Thrones have started coming through. It’s exciting to have the show return, but the pending disappointment of having to wait so long when the season ends always lingers, bittersweet. As I was watching the latest teaser, I tried to think over what makes Game of Thrones so good. Sure, the acting, the sets, there are a lot of factors involved in making the show what it is, but it started from a book series – it’s core strength is in it’s writing. So here are five elements that I think are George R.R. Martin’s greatest storytelling cornerstones in Game of Thrones – the keys to it’s success, and the lessons writers, can take from them.
1. It constantly subverts expectations. The most refreshing thing about Game of Thrones is that it doesn’t go where you expect. I remember the first season, with Sean Bean up on the platform about to be killed. I remember his daughter weaving through the crowd, the tension rising. And I remember thinking ‘Sean Bean’s the biggest star on the show, they’re not going to kill him off’. But they did. It was so great, so amazing to have my expectation smashed, and I’ve found this over and over again with GOT – as soon as you think you’ve got it worked out, that this person or that one is going to come out on top, they’re gone. Killed, maimed, chained up and mutilated. There’s a whole science to why police procedurals are so popular, that it makes people feel more intelligent when they can work out the details of each case. GOT is almost the complete opposite, and it succeeds by switching up on you every chance it gets. It’s exciting storytelling, and hard to do in the modern era, where everyone has theoretically seen every story before in some form. GOT does this better than any other show I’ve seen. The takeaway for writers: Subvert expectation, don’t go down the well-worn path. Think about what you can do that will surprise and excite your readers.
2. It’s honest to the reality in which the characters live. As a writer, you’re only true obligation is to be honest to the story and world you’ve created. You can do whatever you want, so long as the actions and consequences are honest to the rules you’ve established for the world you’re writing about. GOT does this really well – if there were a medieval type world where the strongest ruled, generally by brute force, then there wouldn’t be the usual fairytale romances and maidens in towers. The key to success in that world would essentially be a willingness to do what others would not. Backstabbers and liars would rise, those willing to kill would seize power – it would be a pretty unpleasant place where you’d have to constantly watch your back (or resign to the life of a peasant). It somewhat aligns with the first point, but in GOT, the bad guys, more often that not, win. Because they don’t have the morals, the ethics of the hero. They’ll do what they need to take and maintain power. In the reality of that world, that’s how it would be. It’s that authenticity, that conceptual depth, that Martin has harnessed so well. The key note for writers is to stay honest to the reality you’ve created. Think through the impacts to ensure things don’t jar or stand out as obvious plot devices which don’t fit into that world.
3. The story develops organically. Or more accurately, the story feels like it develops organically. Martin has created such deep, true to life characters that every action has a reaction, every step resonates with someone else. And you pretty much know how each of the characters is going to respond. There’s a real logic and humanity to each of these interactions and no one ever gets away with anything, nothing is ever confined to one plotline. The characters respond as you’d expect real people to, and that changes their story arc. Someone who was once hell bent on one course of action can be swayed by emotion, and that change shifts the entire scene. It doesn’t feel like anything is planned or set in stone, which again, adds to that unpredictability. As a storyteller, the note to take away is to consider every action, not only from a core storyline standpoint, but for how it will ripple through to the rest of your fictional world. This attention to detail will add an important layer of authenticity to your work.
4. The characters are deep. I noted this in the previous point, but it’s a key one to highlight. The characters in Game of Thrones all feel like they could have a mini-series of their own to explain their back story. Martin knows each one very well, has got into tune with who they are and what they want. All of them have a level of humanity that is tangible, allowing the audience to be taken in by them. Well, except Joffrey, I guess. The key point – you need to know you’re characters. Not just ‘he was sixteen with brown hair…’ you need to know them, know where they’ve come from, what they’ve experienced, how those things have affected their world view. Once you do, once you can conceptualize a character to this level, the writing gets a heap easier. Because you know how they’ll react, what they’ll do in response to any action. Knowing your characters is key to writing great stories – research them, understand them. Even if you do all that work and a lot of it never makes it to the page, you’ll know it and your writing will be better for it.
5. Very little of Game of Thrones is revealed in exposition. I’m talking about the TV show here, not the books (which I haven’t read) but on the show, there’s very few sections of blatant exposition – characters delivering monologues on the reasons why things have come to be in this world. This is pretty rare, particularly for these fantasy realm stories, where you need to set up the parameters. GOT pretty much throws you into the politics and lets you work it out. And it’s much better for it. I liken this to something like ‘The Wire’ – when I first started watching The Wire I had to re-check I started on episode one, cause I had no idea what was going on. But four episodes in, I was totally immersed by it. Not knowing the detail made me concentrate harder and take in more to catch up. Of course, you don’t want to make it so complex that the audience doesn’t understand, but there’s definitely something to be said about writing a story that’s lived in, where things are how they are. Your characters wouldn’t, in their reality, sit down and go over the details of why things are how they are, and often you don’t need to, and shouldn’t, do this in your writing. People are smart, they’ll work it out, just give them what they need to make them want to turn the page and you’ll have them. It’s the old ‘show don’t tell’ principle – don’t spell it out, allow your readers into it, let them see it with the characters, engage with the story in a more organic way.
Game of Thrones is an excellent example of storytelling, and there’s a heap for writers to learn from it. Keep these elements in mind as you watch, try to work out how they utilise storytelling elements – and more importantly, how you can use the same tricks in your own work.
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